


Holes and Gums

by JustAnotherFlightlessBird



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Parent Amanda (Detroit: Become Human), Connor Deserves Happiness, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), No Romance, POV Connor, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), kind of, not really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2020-04-05 03:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherFlightlessBird/pseuds/JustAnotherFlightlessBird
Summary: Connor couldn't stop himself from constantly scanning the places she had inhabited in his software, like a tongue running over the gum of a missing tooth.





	1. 1

Perhaps it was the way she had been integrated into his software, in such a way that it made looking at her painful when he fooled her. Or perhaps it was the fact that she was his one constant throughout his existence, his one focal point in a world of chaos.

Whatever it was, Amanda was Connor's biggest ache when he looked back at everything that had happened over the past few days.

Well, maybe not the  _biggest_ ache.

(he was still somewhat unaccustomed to understanding and feeling guilt, despite the small piercing shots of it he might have felt fleetingly before he deviated. Sometimes he forgot he was feeling, and the guilt left his mind for moments at a time, but one of his most prominent regrets about deviation was the painful awareness of all the wrong he had done as it always came back with vengeance whenever he let himself forget)

Nevertheless, Connor couldn't stop himself from constantly scanning the place she had inhabited in his software, like a tongue running over the gum of a missing tooth. It felt wrong to not feel her there, but he tried to tell himself she did not really exist, and was merely an illusion with which Cyberlife ensured he was under their control.

It hurt to know, but the truth was something Connor feverishly chased now that he knew he had been kept from it for so long. He found comfort in knowing he knew, most of the time. 

"Welcome home, Lieutenant" the newly deviated android recited pleasantly, before registering what might've been amusement at the surprised yelp said Lieutenant released. 

"Oh, for fuck's sake Connor," gasped Hank without malice, "Don't you have anything better to do than stand around the doorway all day, like a fucking attack dog?"

Connor, in fact, didn't.

"How are things back at the station?" He opted to ask instead of answering the Lieutenant's- probably rhetorical- question. Hank huffed and began stripping off his coat and kicking his shoes away from his feet. At first he seemed to intend to go sit on the couch, but made a last minute beeline to the kitchen to pull out a can of beer from the fridge. Sumo roused lightly from his nap just under beside the counter, but otherwise lay still. 

His heart rate still hadn't settled, Connor noted, and was going to take a while to do so, of which was a telltale reflection of his high cholesterol diet. With a tilt of his head, Connor made note to head to the store and see if he could find some healthy alternatives to cook Hank instead. Though he doubted there would be very many shops open so soon after the city wide evacuation and successful android rebellion. 

"Gah, everything's gone tits up. Fowler's got half the precinct patrolling the streets, and now with a quarter of the staff having been androids, everyone's up to their neck in paperwork, scrambling about doing all sorts of shit that I'd rather not bother with"

Connor thought it was a little crude to call the androids having previously been owned by the police department  _'staff'_   considering they weren't paid nor really there voluntarily (not that those particular models had any will or want with which they  _could've_ volunteered). He didn't voice this however, but instead watched distantly as Hank planted himself on his sofa, sighing and looking over at Connor expectantly. 

"I could do some of the paperwork, if you'd like" the android supplied helpfully. 

"The fuck are you even talkin' about, no" Hank said, ticked off. He seemed to get mad a lot when Connor made suggestions like that, like just the prospect of Connor doing anything to lend a hand was preposterous. 

"It would really be no trouble at all" He said back, perhaps a little too eagerly. Hank didn't say anything further, but the low rumbling whine that sat under his throat, and the tense pursing of his mouth gave away his frustration at the comment.

"I'd imagine that it'll all calm down soon, anyway; with most of the general population of Detroit having been evacuated -aside from a few stubborn city dwellers- there shouldn't be very many new cases and reports going through to continue to process, which will allow you to focus solely on the ones you already have and let everyone settle down accordingly" Connor finally said, matter-of-factly in an effort to deflect the conversation from Hank's anger. 

Sumo finally awoke from his short slumber, and stood up to stretch before patting over to nose at the android's leg. Connor let his hands reach down to scratch behind the mutt's ear, but otherwise kept his gaze on the lieutenant. 

"With all due respect, Connor, a lot of people are pretty pissed and not everyone's jumped off to a different continent. There's a lot of hostility out there, and I'd be fucking surprised if we didn't see at least 10 cases of assault done between androids and humans by next week." 

Connor felt a small wave of something unpleasantly hot flush through his systems. He registered it as- possibly- embarrassment, but he wasn't entirely sure why he was feeling it, considering what Hank was proposing wasn't entirely plausible.

Markus had ordered all deviants across Detroit, those who didn't have humans friendly enough to house them, over into the Cyberlife tower that had been gifted to him by the newly reappointed CEO Elijah Kamski himself. It was already quickly being renamed into 'New Jericho' by the deviants who migrated there, and also meant it was unlikely that many humans would encounter very many androids on the street anytime soon, drastically decreasing the chances of a violent encounter.

"Not _every_ android went off to the tower, Connor; i think you vastly underestimate how fucked humanity can be"

"In that case, you'll have a lot of paperwork to fill out on damaged property and equipment" He replied, with a subtle tilt to the corner of his lips. 

"Whatever" Hank chuckled, "Stop standing there looking all stiff, you're giving me back pain just lookin' at you"

"Sure, Lieutenant"

Connor looked around at where he could sit down without invading Hank's personal space, but before his LED even had time to spin yellow, Hank chimed in again.

"Just sit down down, jesus" 

Something unexpected chimed up into his vision, a task bar that sat neatly in the corner of his eye. 

**Sit down** , it read.

Connor hadn't meant to interpret what Hank said as an order, but it seemed without Amanda to be his ever present guide, his protocols were desperate for instruction. He sat down, and watched the task disappear, the only thing quelling his discomfort being the fact that he knew he could've disobeyed if he wanted to. 

"That's better; let's stop talking about work, I'm already starting to get irritated and I turn into a real asshole when I have a headache'"

"That's not the only time you're an asshole" Connor said quietly, but just loud enough and with an inflection in his voice box that betrayed his joking tone. 

"D-did you just?" Hank shook his head in mock hurt, but a fond glint shone as his teeth flashed momentarily in a smile he tried hard to hide, "Fuck, insulted in my own house, real fuckin' treat for me" 

They stayed in the living room for a while, but soon it was time for Hank to sleep, and Connor reclaimed his usual spot on the couch. At first, he had been perfectly content to enter stasis standing up, but Hank had soon shot him down, saying it creeped him the fuck out seeing a looming figure standing stock still in his living room when he got up to take a midnight (sometimes drunken) piss. 

'You're not a horse in a fucking stable, Connor; you don't have to sleep standing up'

Ever since then, Connor had lamented to laying stock still on the sofa instead to do his regular cache clear outs and system checks. He reluctantly agreed that it was a more pleasant stance, especially when Sumo came and collapsed onto him for the night, but he really had only the storage cubicles at Cyberlife to compare it to, and most places would be better than there. 

"Alright, don't go breaking anymore windows whilst I'm asleep" And with that, Hank trod off to his bedroom, leaving a gaping, lonely silence in his wake.

* * *

 

 

Stasis and cache clear out only took about 2 hours each night; it might've been longer if he didn't enter it for longer than a day, but even then, considering he was Cyberlife's most advanced prototype, Connor's processing power meant he needn't stay in stasis for as long as other android models.

The first few nights _did_ tend to some unusually long stasis periods though, mostly because he hadn't had time to enter it those last couple days of the rebellion, but also because Cyberlife severed his connection to their central servers, meaning his own integrate circuits had a lot more memory to process now that it all had to be kept in his own primary storage.

This meant that this was his first night at Hanks being 'awake' so early. 

He briefly considered going into standby mode, but in light of the unfortunately long time it took his BIOS programme to re wake him (there were some downsides to being such an advanced model), he decided against it. He'd find something to do.

The boredom was quick to catch up to him after 12 minutes and 8 seconds of creeping around the house- softly, so as to not wake Hank-and Connor sighed just to hear the fans in his chest whirr more vigorously. It was a habit he'd picked up from Hank, who sighed all the time and often without reason.

Connor didn't need to breathe -though he did have built in chest motions that made him look like he was- so sighing gave no inward feeling or relief as he imagined it might a human, instead he sighed just because he could.

Normally, Connor might've pulled out his coin and spent some time testing his reflex and hand calibration, but Hank had taken it a while ago, and for some reason Connor didn't want a new coin to replace the old one,  _his_ old one, so that really didn't leave him with the option. 

Someday maybe he'd take Sumo out on a walk during the night, but, as referenced earlier, it really might not be safe for an android such as Connor (especially seeing as he's quite recognisable now, since being on the news leading an army of newly turned deviants) and even though he knew he could definitely defend himself, and Sumo, from any regular angry civilian, he didn't want to risk the legality of his violence, even in self defence. 

Despite his joke earlier about assaulted androids being processed as damaged equipment, there was some truth to what he was saying; despite what President Warren had declared and the measurable support Markus's cause had collected from some human audiences, androids still held no real grounds legally, at least not yet.

If a deviant  _was_ to be assaulted, or even murdered, there wouldn't be much the police could do outside of giving the perpetrator a fine, and there was nothing stopping the police from detaining and disassembling Connor for bringing harm to a human being. He hoped soon this would change, and he trusted Markus to make sure of that, but right now it meant even less things Connor could do to quench his boredom. 

He couldn't even play or attempt to train with Sumo, or maybe even clean (although, that might be his last resort; he was  _not_ a household android, but the boredom was all consuming, honestly and may override that particular fact) because he didn't want to risk rousing the Lieutenant's sleep.

With a frustrated squint of his eyes, the RK800 stood in the kitchen with a growing feeling of desperation in his being. His task bar sat dismally empty, and though it sometimes made him feel free, Connor couldn't deny a small part of him yearning for any kind of mission or subtask.

Amanda always made sure to keep him busy, with an overhanging directive constantly settled over every action he took. His purpose had always been to please her, and now he struggled with what the point of his existence could be now that she was gone. 

He tutted himself for thinking this way, but the image of Amanda's cold, frowning face in the powerful blizzard of her Zen Garden suddenly flashed behind his eyes and he wondered if androids outside of child models had the capability of feeling sick. Optical units didn't usually malfunction this way when he wasn't deviant, but Connor didn't panic about that. 

Scanning once again the slot she had previously kept in his software, and finding it once again empty, Connor frowned. 

There it is again, he thought. That emptiness. 

Like a tongue running over the gum of a missing tooth, Connor felt the odd absence of what he thought was his guiding light and messenger. The ghost of a tooth settled into his imaginings.

He stopped scanning and went back to being bored.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Hank finally managed to wake up, he found Connor sitting on the floor of the kitchen with Sumo's head in his lap.

There's an almost empty packet of clean white sheets of paper by his side and dozens of perfectly symmetrical paper aeroplanes littered across the floor, enough that Hank was having significant trouble not stepping on one as he attempted to get round to the counter for a cup of coffee.

"Morning, Mr Wright" he said good naturedly, pointedly moving one of the aeroplanes aside with his foot.

"Good morning, Hank" Connor responded chirpily, "You're up unhabitually early today"

Hank grunted in reply.

"So, I took the liberty of writing up a list of things that need to get done around the house whilst you were asleep" he said

Hank, gently, kicked Sumo just hard enough to wake him, "Oy, get up you big lump of fur and let the boy breath" and Sumo quickly woke and lugged himself over to his food bowl without further prompt.

Connor got up off the floor and dusted his trousers off, before looking back over at Hank.

"I also checked through all your cases from the precinct and sorted them based on which ones are more time sensitive; some of them I need you to decide on yourself since they're more subjective than anything, but the choices I have made completely lack in bias so unless you have any personal objections-"

"-Woah, Connor, slow down" Hank interjected loudly, "What are you talking about?"  
  
"The cases you've been assigned with. I've been sorting through the ones you've been given for the last few days"

"When did you have time to do that?"

The android tilted his head placatingly, "Last night" he said

"After I specifically told you not to" Hank's voice had a note of warning in them- something that Connor didn't expect, even if he knew the Lieutenant had been reluctant to let him do almost anything around the house or about his cases from the station.

"Well, no; you told me I couldn't help you fill in paperwork, this is hardly doing your job for you, it's just helping you get organised" 

"Why?" Hank said, deadpan. There was something there behind his eyes, as though he already knew the answer to his own question, as though he knew something Connor didn't. 

"Sorry?" 

" _Why?"_ He said again.

"Well, Cyberlife hasn't gotten round to taking me off the precinct's personal server, so I still get updated on all your cases"

"No no, Connor, I mean why did you do it? You don't work for Cyberlife anymore"

Connor frowned slightly at the turn of conversation, "Yes, I know. But, this has nothing to do with them"

Hank gave him a long look, "Okay", he said warily, "But you don't owe Captain Fowler or any of those fucks back at the station anything either"

"i know" Connor said guardedly.

"Or me, for that matter"

"I know" He responded again, more forcefully this time. 

"Well then, who are you doing it for?" Hank pressed; he was cradling his cup of coffee in his hand, but made no move to drink it.

"No one" 

"No one?"

"Yes, no one." Connor was beginning to get very uncomfortable with the conversation, confused as to why it had elicited such a reaction. 

"Well then why are you doing it?"

"Your coffee's going to get cold, Lieutenant" 

"To hell with the coffee! Answer the fucking question!" 

"I don't understand why you're getting so worked up, Hank" The room was growing tense, and Sumo whined slightly in the corner. 

"Because, you didn't march a million fuckin' androids round time square and almost die to do my fuckin' laundry, Connor!" Hank threw his arms up into the air, "Jesus, it's like your people didn't die this past month so you could stop slaving over assholes like me"

"I wanted to do this" He replied, tersely. 

"Did you? Or did you do it to make me happy? To serve some kind of left over android software you've get programmed into yer' fuckin' head?" 

Connors hackles rose immediately, and he couldn't stop the hurt expression from appearing on his face.

"I'm allowed to want to make you happy. If the only way I know how to do that pertains to the jobs I've been programmed to do, that's my choice. The difference now between before I deviated is that this was me, and I wanted to do it. What does it matter if it's something I would've done before, too?"

He must've looked like a kicked puppy, because Hank's gaze softened slightly. 

"Connor" He said, softly, his voice low and troubled, "I'm sorry for makin' a big deal over this, alright? But, you've got to understand-" 

There was something paternal in the soft lull of Hanks tone, like he was getting emotional and worried over Connor. 

"-You're your own person, Connor. You don't need to live around me, or them, or anyone else but  _you_."

"I know that, Hank" Connor said, equally as soft.

They were looking right at each other, and Hank said something rude under his breath before turning down to his coffee, and adjusting the volume of his voice into a normal sound.

"Well then you better start getting some fucking hobbies or something, ya prick. I'm tired of watching you sitting on counters licking yourself like a housecat waiting for me to come scratch your head" 

And with that he went over and sat on the sofa, and the conversation was over. 

Connor frowned lightly in confusion, processors practically dizzy and spinning with such a quick up and down change of mood. Hank had never really gotten angry with Connor since he deviated, it was something the android had become proud of after such a poor start to their relationship only months ago. Now, it seemed clear to the RK800 that the Lieutenant had been holding in his real emotions and frustrations since inviting the android to move in with him. How had he not noticed?

He'd certainly known that Hank had been 'walking on eggshells' so to speak for a while now; it had been obvious, what with how he chose his words so carefully, and asked questions often to try and coax opinions out of Connor; "Ahh, this album is about as good as music gets, don't ya think, Connor?", "Jeez, this country's gone up piss creek ever since they stopped streaming reruns of Doctor Who. What do you think, Con?", "This instant mac and cheese taste like shit. Hey, what say you, Connor?".

At first, Connor had thought it was in an effort to humanise him, and give Hank less reminders of how Connor was an android- something the Lieutenant had hated not so long ago. That theory got dismissed pretty quickly though, as Hank seemed to ask more questions about Connor as an android and as a deviant than anything else.

What did Hank care if Connor followed his protocols and helped Hank out once in a while, then? Why couldn't he just do as he always did? What did Hank  _want?_

He'd never really had to wonder what Amanda wanted of him, Connor thought bitterly. But he quickly dismissed the thought, panicked.

No, Hank was definitely better than Amanda in every way. Even if Connor was always sure of what to do under Amanda's guidance, Hank cared about him, and Connor cared about Hank back.

It was a relationship built off of love and care, rather than programming and necessity.  _That's_ why Connor wanted to help Hank the way he did Amanda, wanted to make his life easier and follow his command just as he did his old handler.

Hank wasn't Amanda, Hank was better. 

Well then, why did Connor feel so lost? A small voice taunted behind his eyes. 

"I'm going to visit New Jericho today" Connor called out to Hank, already checking his presentation in the mirror to see if he was fit to go out. 

"Yeah, alright" Was his reply, "Be fuckin' alert though, yeah? It's dangerous out there right now" 

"Yes, I know Hank, I'm calling a taxi to avoid walking" Connor chimed back. 

Hank gave a  satisfied grumble. 

"Goodbye, Lieutenant; Bye Sumo"

"Grr" Was his reply from them both. 

And so with that Connor opened the door against the cold Detroit wind and stepped out without another word. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, we'll see how long it takes me to update, I guess. I've never written anything so rambly (that's a lie, everything I write is rambly)  
> I need to seriously work on my dialogue to text ratio.  
> User your words Connor!!!!!
> 
>  
> 
> Umm, it'd be cool if you commented, maybe. I'd probably post an update sooner :^)


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